Sony Pictures Animation Picks Up Rights For Rollercoaster Tycoon Film

Sony Pictures Animation, the studio behind Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, picked up the movie rights to Chris Sawyer's strategy/sim PC series RollerCoaster Tycoon, planning to adapt it into a live-action/CGI hybrid film.

Harald Zwart, who directed the upcoming remake of The Karate Kid, is helming the project and could possibly direct the movie version, too. He will serve as an executive producer for the film, as will Nick Reed and Atari CEO and president Jim Wilson.

RollerCoaster Tycoon made its debut in 1999, tasking players with building roller coasters and managing theme parks. Hasbro Interactive released the first game, but Atari/Infogrames acquired the company a couple years later and put out two sequels and several expansions for the series.

The franchise has generated more than $300 million in sales, according to a report from Heat Vision, which broke the news of the big screen production. Though Atari hasn't released a new RollerCoaster Tycoon game in several years, Frontier Developments' Thrillville is considered its spiritual successor.

David Ronn and Jay Scherick are writing the script for the Rollercoaster Tycoon movie. They're both also working on Sony Pictures Animation's The Smurfs project, and Scherick is penning a film titled The Zookeeper -- a comedy from The King of Queens actor Kevin James, not an adaptation of the addictive GBA/PS2/DS puzzler.